Future World: Where Art Meets Science

Singapore, Malaysia

When I asked my 8 and 5-year old kids if they would like to
spend the afternoon at an exhibition at Singapores’ArtScience Museum, I was met
with a resounding no. With so many action-packed activities from wakeboarding at
Singapore Wake Park, treetop obstacle courses at Forest Adventure and mountain
biking at Ketam Mountain Bike Park in Pulau Ubin to the oodles of kid-friendly
theme parks and attractions on Sentosa, I wasn’t really surprised at the reaction.
But I took them anyway!

And they're very glad I did. Future World: Where Art Meets Science is an air-conditioned indoor exhibition at Marina Bay Sands’ ARTScience Museum which not only provided us all with a break from the humidity but turned out to be one of the kids favourite experiences on our latest trip to Singapore.

Created in collaboration with Japanese art and technology collective team lab, FutureWorld takes up nearly a quarter of the museum’s total gallery space. From the minute my two little adventurers entered the technological wonderland, they were enchanted by the interactive exhibition, which is, in effect, Singapore’s largest digital art gallery.

They gaped wide-eyed in Nature, a world full of digital flora and fauna comprised entirely of reactive digital technology. They went flying down a slide into Sketch Town, several times over, before they helped to create a massive wall of ever-evolving artwork through simple crayon colouring and cutting-edge science and technology.

Sketch Town, which included recognisable landmarks such as the Merlion and the Singapore Flyer, was a favourite. The kids coloured spaceships and cars, which they scanned on an easy to use digital scanner and then watched mesmerised as their creations became animated and shuffled their way into the projected installation like magic. They scanned image also became a paper model kit so they could recreate a 3D Model of their creations. Amazing!

They lost themselves building colourful constructions with fibreglass light cubes, played hide and seek with little people and stood under a stunning digital waterfall, before bounded into the next section, Park.

Here they found a sketch aquarium where they scanned their own Jellyfish artworks then watched as they wriggled their way across the giant aquarium screen, and then bounced into the Light Ball Orchestra. A massive pit of gigantic glowing balls that they could roll, kick, throw and play amongst, which they did, gleefully.

With time not on our sides we missed a few of the sections but still finished on a glittery high in celestial Space and its “Crystal Universe”, an incredible installation of 170,000 LED lights that created the illusion of stars moving through space.

Our only mistake was not leaving enough time for the kids to do it all over again: something that will definitely be rectified on our next visit. Because this is a place you’ll want to go back to time and again.

If this is the future, it looks very bright indeed

When she’s not treading on Lego and being forced to watch Frozen on loop, Aleney de Winter is a travel, food and parenting writer. She shares tales of travelling and eating along with the hilarious antics of her globetrotting six-year old foodie son and daredevil three-year old daughter on her blog, Boy Eats World.